Quotes About Metaphysics

There are realms of life where the concepts of sense and nonsense do not apply.

The fifth leading division of names is into relative and absolute, or let us rather say, relative and non-relative; for the word absolute is put upon much too hard duty in metaphysics, not to be willingly spared when its services can be dispensed with.

there does in fact prevail a much greater unanimity among thinking persons, than might be supposed from their diametrical divergence on the great questions of moral metaphysics

To exempt themselves from action, oppressed peoples entrust themselves to "fate," a negative salvation as well as a means of interpreting events: a philosophy of history for daily use, a determinist vision on an effective basis, a metaphysic of circumstance . . .

The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this—that, in place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations, and the general laws of their development.

Idealists of all schools, aristocrats and bourgeois, theologians and metaphysicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers, or poets, not forgetting the liberal economists—unbounded worshippers of the ideal, as we know—are much offended when told that man, with his magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless aspirations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but matter, only a product of vile matter.

With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.

The fact is, of course, that the metaphysician wants to re-think the universe; the plain man does not. The metaphysician seeks for an inclusive system where all reality can be rationally housed. The plain man is less ambitious. He is content with the kind of knowledge he possesses about men and things—so far as it goes. Science has already told him much; each day it tells him more. And, within the clearing thus made for him in the tangled wilderness of the unknown, he feels at home.

It must, I think, be admitted that most men approach the difficulties of a scientific exposition far more hopefully than the difficulties of a metaphysical argument. They will take more trouble because they expect more result.

Metaphysics—objective reality; Epistemology—reason; Ethics—self-interest; Politics—capitalism.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

By that which is self-caused , I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.

2. The essence of things are from all eternity, and unto all eternity shall remain immutable; The existence of God is essence; Therefore...

Dios es causa inmanente, pero no transitiva, de todas las cosas. [64]

Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?' 'No.' 'Then where does the past exist, if at all?

There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics, politics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic, by far than any 'social contract' or covenant with the postulate of the divine. this instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

The idea that time is an illusion is an old one, predating any Times Square ball drop or champagne celebrations. It reaches back to the days of Heraclitus and Parmenides, pre-Socratic thinkers who are staples of introductory philosophy courses.

Nothingness, after all, is simpler than any one particular existing thing ever could be; there is only one nothing, and many kinds of something.

Those who think of metaphysics as the most unconstrained or speculative of disciplines are misinformed; compared with cosmology, metaphysics is pedestrian and unimaginative. —Stephen Toulmin

Nothing in the fact that there was a first moment in time necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment.

Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three.

Asking about a time before the beginning of our spherical spacetime is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. There is no such thing.

The Mysterious Pass, which opens beyond space and time, is inconceivable by means of discursive thought and has, by definition, no fixed position.